The Truth About Your Health with Andrea Nakayama

And like you said, there is a lot of noise. How can they cut through the noise? What's one thing that they need to do today to get on this process of starting their wellness journey?

The non negotiables was always tier one for me. And those non negotiables are sleep, poop and blood sugar balance. And just focusing on those, all the other symptoms may resolve themselves if we focus on on one of those at a time, making it more again, like I said about the blood work, more foundational instead of looking for the branches or the leaves on the trees, getting to the roots and the soil that those roots live in. And I have lots of different ways I look at health that help us make it simple. Where your attention economy is going, pause before you hit purchase or believe what's being told and tune in to what is actually happening within you when you hear or see that solution.

What if everything you've been told about fixing your health is actually missing the most important part of the story? What if your symptoms aren't random, your labs aren't the full picture and your body has been trying to tell you something all along but no one taught you how to listen? Today's guest knows that gap intimately to a terminal brain cancer. While she was just seven weeks pregnant, Andrea Nakayama found herself navigating not only grief and solo motherhood, but a health care system that couldn't fully meet the complexity of real human experience. That moment didn't just change her life, it redefined her work on Andrea went to become a functional medicine nutritionist, blending systems biology with narrative medicine to help understand that our biology is never separate from our biography, which I cannot wait to dive into. What started as a personal search for answers became the Functional Nutrition Alliance, a multimillion dollar global education platform training thousands of practitioners to move beyond one size fits all protocols into truly personalized care. Today, Andrea work. Andrea works with the intersection of functional nutrition, lifestyle medicine and human centered healing. Especially focused on women navigating midlife, menopause and longevity. So selfishly, I cannot wait to ask her questions. So this conversation, we're diving into a powerful question. What happens when we stop trying to hack our bodies and start learning how to understand them instead? Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Oh my gosh, I have chills from that introduction. Thank you so much for having me here.

Oh my goodness, I have been so excited to have you on. I just the work that you do. I have so many questions and I have for the past, gosh, almost 16 years been trying to listen to my body, but definitely there's been so many doctors. And right now I'm in the middle of seeing, you know, Eastern Western medicine, functional medicine. There's this craze about peptides, like, all the things. And so I can't wait to dive in with you because we have a lot of listeners that also deal with chronic pain and inflammation. They might be going through menopause, but definitely, I think now more than ever, there's a lot of women out there that may. That might be a little bit like me, that didn't listen to their bodies or aren't listening, and now they're starting to feel or suffer actually the consequences of that. So I am just. Can you please take us back to how this even started for you, because you were seven weeks pregnant.

Yes. And this is back in 2000, so this is a long time ago. So you can ask me any questions about it. I'm used to speaking to it. So I was seven weeks pregnant with our son when my late husband was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme. That's a grade four, very aggressive brain tumor. Seemingly came out of nowhere. Right. Like there. If we look back, there may have been a couple of hints, but. But nothing major. And at that time, again, this is back in 2000, that tumor mostly occurred in older populations. And he was just 31 at the time he was diagnosed. So he was a very rare case at the time. Not so anymore. So that was our first time being kind of catapult into the medical system. And you've had this experience. Experience with your accident, I'm assuming, going from not being in the system to all of a sudden being in the system, you are kind of theirs to work with because something is gravely wrong. Not what a lot of us are living with. In the. In the, you know, milieu of something's not right. And I can't figure it out. And it was during that time that I saw for the first time the gaps in our medical system. And I want to be very clear that I am not here to disparage what our medical system can do. In fact, I think we're asking it to do too much. But I saw gaps that weren't being addressed. And the first two gaps that I saw were that people were treated like their diagnosis. So, yes, you are your diagnosis, and that everybody with the same diagnosis is treated the same. So there is a protocol that goes for that diagnosis and those two things. As a young thinking woman, where my soulmate was being told he was going to die in six months, and I'm seven weeks pregnant. Were alarming to me because I was thinking, well, wait a minute. He's not a glioblastoma. He's Isamu. He's my soulmate. He's my husband. He's a son and a brother and a software engineer and someone who likes to take his shoes off and walk barefoot. You know, all of the things that were. Who he was were not a part of the equation. So that takes us all the way back to kind of the origins or the roots of my awakening.

Oh, my goodness, I want to cry right now because, Yeah. I mean, even with my diagnosis, they were like, well, you'll never work again. You'll never walk again. You're going to be permanently, you know, disabled. Go get back in your wheelchair. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. No, I am not. Complex regional pain syndrome. Like, exactly. That's not the vision I have for me. And so thank goodness for you. Thinking outside the box. And I have to say, I love. I love my medical doctors, the doctor who saved my leg. But, like, when I moved to Texas and had to find a new pain doctor, I went in and I was like, he just was not getting me at all. He was used to, like, treating everybody the same. This is the medication you take next. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not taking that medication. And I was like, I am your worst nightmare of a patient

with your best outcomes.

Yeah. And now I have to say, like, I go in and he hugs me and he follows me on Instagram, and I love him. He's amazing. But at first it was like, I was like, I don't think you know what you're messing with. Like, I am not crps. I am a person. So I. That really hit home when you said that. And also the fact that, like, there are a lot of things missing where people. This is the. This is what you have. Well, this is what's done and thinking outside the box. So, first of all, thank you for the work that you do and explain. To explain to somebody who might be listening. That's. That's like, well, I don't. What is fun. Like, actually, my husband was like, what's a. What's functional medicine? Nutrition? What is that? He started, like, chat. Gpting it. You know, explain to us what exactly that is, what that entails. And how is that different from your, you know, traditional medicine where you go to your. Your surgeon or your primary physician.

Yes. So I'm going to Explain functional medicine first and then I'll talk about the distinction between functional nutrition, which is really two words that I put together. So functional medicine has in some ways fortunately and in other ways unfortunately gotten more attention and it's kind of moved away from its initial premises. So I'm going to go back to the 1990s and the origination of functional medicine, which was based on the three primary tenants. And those primary tenants were that we work in a therapeutic partnership. That's tenant number one. So you and your doctor, your doctor's making room for you, Amberly, in the conversation, not just seeing you as your diagnosis. We're in a partnership. And I always like to remind people that when you go to an expert, sure they have their expert expertise, but there's something they don't have expertise in, and that is the other person in the room, which is you. You have expertise in you. So a therapeutic partnership, tenant number one, tenant number two is that we look for the roots. And I know that root cause has become something that we've capitalized on. So we're telling everybody they're getting to the root. But looking for the roots means we ask, why is this happening? Not just what do I do about it? And we have to really skilled at asking and deciphering that why. And a lot of the why has gotten very complicated these days with where capitalist cultures have taken us, with selling us that why. And the third tenant. So we have the therapeutic partnership looking for the roots, which asks why? Not what, why is this happening? Not what do I do about it. The third is a systems based approach, and that's based on systems biology as well as systems thinking. So systems biology helps us understand that everything in the body is connected. Our medical industry is divided into ologies. You're going to see your orthopedist, your gastroenterologist, your psychologist, your rheumatologist, your endocrinologist. In functional medicine, we see that all as connected. Your gut is connected to your liver, which is connected to your hormones. Hormones, we can't separate them. So systems biology helps us understand the whole person versus the specifics or those specialties that you might be seeing someone for. We find the interconnections. So those are the tenants of functional medicine and happy to answer any questions about that. In functional nutrition, what I did was take those same tenants and, and translate them into the lifestyle practices. How do we understand those same philosophies but fill the gaps between our medical visits? So while a functional medicine doctor may honor nutrition and lifestyle medicine, many do believe in nutrition and lifestyle medicine that's out there training, just like it's not the training of your doctor to know about food. And so this is another, I believe, adjunct support system that we have when we're thinking about what do I do every day between my medical appointments that's so good.

And I really believe food is medicine and looking at the whole picture and how everything is connected. And I've always wanted to know, well, yeah, these are the symptoms, but why is it happening?

Yes.

And there's so many times like I've done blood work with my primary physician and they're like, yeah, everything looks pretty good. Everything's fine. And I'm like, but no, it's. Something is not fine, Something is not right.

Yes.

So then I went to a functional nutritionist and doctor that's here in town and they're like, well, yeah, they did in a more extensive blood panel. And they're like, oh yeah, we can see. This is off, this is off, this is off. Let's address those things. And so I think that's really important to find the right doctor. I went to another doctor, my gynecologist, who said she didn't believe in blood work. She would. I said, I need you to do some blood work. I need to know where my hormones are. And she goes, oh, no, no, no, we don't believe in blood work. And I'm like, well, what blood tells it all? Like it tells. Well, not at all, but pretty much it tells your level.

That's a part of the story. And I'm going to, you know, say something a little contrary here because I think we're looking for too many things with functional lab work. I think there's actually a divide in what you just shared. So I do feel like conventional medical doctors are looking through a pathological lens. So when they tell you everything is okay, that is in keeping with their training because they are looking for a pathological problem, a diagnosis. If they don't see it in that lab range, which is based on the location of that lab, what's average? It's based on averages. They're going to say everything looks fine. That is their scope of practice. There is then doing those same labs, maybe even a little bit more expanded, and looking at them through a phase functional lens that helps us understand if your body is functioning optimally. And that's where we can make little tweaks. To me, that step comes before looking at the standard labs, before we do all the fancy out of pocket labs that I feel like we are being sold today are looking for what it tells us is a root mold, histamine, oxalates, all of these things that are causing people to self diagnose, self label. And that mental talk is very powerful for our health outcomes. And so I'm concerned that we're doing ourselves a disservice. And I'll talk about this with menopause as well, by the stories we're telling about our bodies when we go looking for problems before we allow the body to do what the body body is able to do. So I just wanted to say conventional look at labs and functional look at those. Conventional labs and functional labs are three different things. I hope that made sense.

That really makes a lot of sense. And now I feel like lately, especially with social media and stuff, there are so many people out there that call themselves a functional doctor or a functional nutri. I've heard already functional nutritionist. I know you said you put those words together.

It was a long time ago.

I've heard that. I've heard that a lot. And I'm like, well, where did you get. Did you go to school for that? Like, do you have a degree in that? Like, so you mean to tell me that you can read my blood work and then prescribe me a bunch of peptides or whatever it may be? Do you feel like there are a lot of quacks out there?

I don't want to call them quacks. I do. You know I did. You don't. Am I being rude? No, not at all. Never. You never rude. So gracious. I did build a school and I trained a lot of providers, clinicians. I'm no longer with that school. I can't speak to the training. It's diverted from the, the integrity that I know I would hold. And that's fairly recently. But even watching my students, there's so much noise that they can easily get diverted themselves and seduced by what the next fix is. And the consumer population is asking for that and that makes practitioners feel like they have to give it. So I think there's a lot of sustainability societal complexes at play here. There's the food industrial complex, there's the medical industrial complex that's become very capitalistic and is more out profit than anything else. I think there's the beauty industry. I think there's so many things. And then we went looking for our own solutions and turned to the wellness industry, which I think is. Has become unfortunately wildly corrupt. And I think that not only people think that they can fix themselves at every turn and Corner, whether it's a peptide or a protein or whatever it is. But I think that providers are under the pressure to deliver those fixes because that is what the consumer, the patient is demanding. And so I think we're in a very complicated knot. I will tell you. My son lives in Tokyo and I spent three weeks in Japan and, and I was shocked to be met with a different, like a completely different reality. They're not talking about peptides, they're not worried about their protein. Their food at the like corner little shop is such higher quality than what I'm able to get in my bubble of Portland, Oregon, where I have choices and can shop with real care. And so I feel like we're in a tangle where we've broken our understanding of things in order to pay to fix it.

I agree. And I love Tokyo. I've been to Japan. I've been there six times and the food is so clean. Every time I went without trying, I wasn't trying. And I was eating good. I was eating sushi on the corner spot. Like you can get. That's what you get to go is like, that's the most affordable thing is just to grab some sushi. I would lose ten pounds.

Yeah, same without trying.

I was eating and I was eating great.

I felt like I was eating too much. I was like, I cannot eat the amount of food that is being given to me. And yet I came back and not only weight loss, but also just like I just felt better. I felt more like in my body embodied in a way and cleaner. And again, like I live in a bubble in this country where I have access and I care and pay for that access to good quality food. And still, like you said at the corner, the quality was something I don't even think I can compare to what I can get here. And that kind of reality shift makes me even more acutely aware of how layered the system has become that we live in that feeds and sells us. Feeds, you know, literally and figuratively and sells us a solution to the situation that we're living in.

Yeah, and like you said, there is a lot of noise. How does someone. We're listening, we're like, well, I want to feel healthier, I want less inflammation, I want to move better. I want to feel like I'm in my body. And how can they cut through the noise and start to feel better today? What's one thing that they need to do today to get on this process of, of starting their wellness journey?

Yeah, I'm going to take this twofold I mean, I have a lot of systems that I would teach into and the non negotiables was always tier one for me. And those non negotiables are some sleep, poop and blood sugar balance. And just focusing on those, all the other symptoms may resolve themselves if we focus on one of those at a time. So just saying, how is my sleep? What's going on with my sleep? Andrea said, focus on my sleep. Like what? What's that? Like, could I get help with that instead of addressing the downstream symptoms? Right. Same with what's my elimination like, what if I tracked that right. So making it more again, like I said about the blood work, more foundational instead of looking for the branches or the leaves on the trees, getting to the roots and the soil that those roots live in. And I have lots of different ways I look at health that help us make it simple. The other tip that I want to give to people is to think, think about where your attention economy is going. So as you are on social or doing anything that help that where you engage with media, whether it's print media or, you know, social media, where's your attention going and what happens to you when your attention goes there. So I will never give a supplement advice, dietary advice that's been through my 20 plus years in the career. I won't give that. I'll give people ways to think because I can't pretend to know your individual situation. And if I talk specifically about B6 or magnesium, I don't know if I'm doing your body an injustice that you're going to go out and buy that thing because you think it's a fix for something you heard. That is for me, a clinical mistake, an injustice. I wouldn't do that. So I would say, as you're watching things, what does it bring up in you? Do you feel heard? Do you feel seen? Do you feel compelled? Pause before you hit purchase or believe what's being told and tune in to what is actually happening within you when you hear or see, see that solution.

That is so good and it is so refreshing to have you say that. I'm not here to tell you to go buy this supplement or that I saw my first functional doctor. He was a former orthopedic doctor and then he turned into having his own practice and I saw him and within our first meeting I was buying like $2,000 worth of supplements and it was so much that I couldn't even keep up with it.

Exactly. And this can't help you all at once. You don't even know when you get a stack. And sorry to interrupt you. When you get a stack of supplements, you don't even know what's working or what's not. That's a recipe for moving away from your body's intuition instead of into it.

And yes, you're exactly right. And this is, this is years ago. This is probably, I mean, four years ago, before I'd even heard of what peptides were. It wasn't the rave, it wasn't all over social media yet. Wanted me to inject peptides straight into my leg with CRPs. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was like, you know, injecting a limb that has been diagnosed with crps, that could really cause a big flare up. I said, I can't imagine. I said, you're. I mean, it could even cause it to spread. I don't feel comfortable, you know, injecting my leg with a needle. And to your point, it was like, let me just throw all this stuff at you. Wasn't thinking about specifically me or what was going on with me, but let's take all this stuff, give me all this money. So, I mean, I love that you're saying you address these things, which, by the way, y', all, this is easy for you to do. What is your sleep like? What is your poop like? What's your blood sugar and attention to your economy? How much. And I think energy is everything, and everything is energy. What amount of energy are you putting on social media, on Facebook, on the news, whatever that may be? So I want to ask you, Andrea, like, how does someone sleep better if they're sitting here going, well, I know I need more sleep. I just don't have good sleep or anything that you could give them. As far as a solution to have better sleep, Yeah.

I always like to separate the problem from the solution. So before we say this is the solution for I don't have good sleep, I want to know what does that mean? What does it mean you don't have good sleep? Are you having a hard time falling asleep? Are you having a hard time staying asleep? Are you waking up feeling tired? So just gathering that information. Remember when I talked about the therapeutic partnership? I said, you're the only expert in you. If you go into your health care provider, whether they're a health coach or a functional nutritionist or a medical doctor, and you say, I'm having trouble sleeping sleeping, they're going to give you something for that idea. I'm not going to do that. I want to know more. I'm going to ask you questions. And so the more you track and know what's happening with you, the better informed you are going into that appointment and asking for what your needs are. Hey doc, I notice I have trouble staying asleep at night. I wake up two or three times to go to the bathroom or. What are your thoughts on that? Like you're having a different conversation than I don't sleep. Well, I hope that makes sense too.

That makes sense and I selfishly have to jump in. Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be your guinea pig here.

Okay.

So I usually don't have a problem staying asleep through the night. I mean I, when I go to sleep, I sleep like a rock. And I'm like, oh, it's morning already. This is my thing. I wake up like this morning I woke up going, whoa. I just was, I felt exhausted. I was like, whoo. Felt like, I don't know, a zombie.

Yeah.

So what are your suggestions for me?

What I would love for you to do is to play with those sleep time and the wake time. And so looking at, does that change if I go to sleep a half hour earlier? Does it change if I go to sleep an hour earlier? Does it change if I don't set my alarm clock? Like to start to experiment with yourself and give yourself that chance not to look for the fix for what you're feeling, but to get curious what that symptom, we'll call it, that is telling you is something and we don't know what yet. But it may be something that through some experimentation with self, you can find the answer there. I'll give you an example. With me, when I was perimenopausal, I would notice that I would have hot flashes at night that would wake me up in the middle of the night. And that was really my only symptom. Knock on wood. I'll be 60 this year. Like menopause, not an issue. No hormones and no exactly exogenous hormones coming into my body. And I'm not pro or against, I'm just telling my story. But I noticed that if I went to sleep earlier, so instead of 10 30, I backed it up to 10, even backed it up to 930 that I was able to fall asleep and stay asleep without having a hot flash. If I wasn't, I'm going to explain, explain why physiologically, because that's my expertise. I can understand the physiology. Right. But also not watching the news, not watching something that was going to get me amped up, making sure that anything I was engaged with in the evening was not getting my cortisol going. Now, our sex hormones are intricately related to our other hormones. So our sex hormones are. For people listening, I've got a little pyramid or triangle at the bottom of our hormones. And the management of our hormones is our blood sugar and then our insulin and then our cortisol and then our thyroid and then our sex hormones. If we're addressing our sex hormones top down and not paying attention to those other factors, we're going to continue to have more underlying issues. If we build from the ground up, we're going to have less issues as our sex hormones go through changes, whether that's monthly or annually or whatever that extent of time moves into as we age. And of course, I said blood sugar was one of our non negotiables. And when I talk about blood sugar, I have to say I'm not talking about getting a continuous glucose monitor and managing everything fat, fiber, protein at every meal. I'm not talking about measuring your protein and getting a certain amount fat, fiber, protein every meal. We've gotten so regimented with how we think about food and how we think about managing our bodies that we are doing our bodies a disservice. We're micromanaging to the point where we are not living. Take us back to Tokyo. Nobody's doing that.

Mm.

It's a. It's. It's an ecology that supports food and health and aging, not these consumeristic systems that are constantly selling us something to optimize or hack or improve.

Yeah. I mean, oh, my goodness. Between the different monitors that you can buy and everything. And I will say that, you know, I was in the fitness industry for 26 years, and there was a time I was pretty obsessive about, you know, every Sunday measuring, like food prepping and measuring everything and putting it in the containers. Now, I did do that because. Put food in containers because I was eating in between clients and.

Yeah.

You know, but I love that you keep it simple. My whole motto this year is keep it simple.

Yes.

And I love that you keep it simple. You're like, fat, fiber, protein every meal.

Yes. And snack. And if you like to track and use things, I think that's fine. I don't want to take that away from people. I like sometimes like tracking. Am I getting all the colors in my diet? Like, am I getting diversity? Another thing about Japan, so much diversity in each meal. But when I think about what we do with that tracking, that's where it becomes problematic. If you like the practice of tracking, taking all the meaning and self diagnosis or self reprimand out of it is where the tracking can feed a part of. If you're type A and you like to keep things in order. I wear my OURA ring and I look at the results of my OURA ring, which tells me, you know, about my sleep and my heart rate. And it's just clues. They're just clues. They don't mean something bad or good about you. If we're wearing a continuous glucose monitor, what I see as the problem is that people are identifying their blood sugar swings with what they ate alone, and then they're making the food bad or good. Banana bad or good. There are other things that impact your blood sugar, like the mood you're in, the sleep you had that night, whether you had an argument, whether you're having a hard day at work when you last exercised, that doesn't come up. All we're doing is associating it with the food, and then we're labeling that food is good for us or bad for us. So that's just one example of where we're taking the impulse to track and getting very dogmatic and deterministic about it. When a lot of these things are just true but partial, they're clues that are part of a much broader ecosystem, which is why I like to start simple. And. And when we need to, we get more specific. But people are taking that specificity into their own hands and potentially doing harm.

Oh, you're so good. I could just listen to you all day.

Thank you. And.

And I agree. I mean, there. I think it's great if you want to, like you said, like, think, am I getting all the colors? Am I getting variety? I think variety is, you know, is good. Like, if I go to a restaurant, the first thing I do is like, what protein do? I don't. Do I not usually make at home or eat and add in. But when I was in the fitness industry, there was a time when I look back that it was obsessive. It was. It was a little too obsessive.

Yes.

And I just, you know, what I eat for fuel. I like. I love the taste of food, don't get me wrong. But I really eat for fuel. And, you know, and now I have to get. We. We keep it real here. We keep. On the show. We keep it real. And you said one of the three things is poop.

Yeah.

How you eliminate. Yeah. First question, how many times should you be using the bathroom every day?

At least two to three.

Two to three holes.

Moly.

Really?

Yes. We Want to be moving things out of our body for many reasons, one of those being our hormones. So, again, when I talk about hormones and where we're grabbing for these fixes to the changes in our hormones, if we back it up and we think about our blood sugar, we think about our sleep also impacts our hormones, we think about our poop. We're putting the foundations in place to mitigate the damaging effects that hormones can produce when they're changing so radically.

Yeah, I have been experiencing the change of hormones for sure. I just started experiencing it, and my husband came in the living room the other night and he was like, are you okay? What's wrong with you? I had on, like. I was basically, like, naked on the couch, the floors open, and it was like 50 degrees outside. He's like, you're seriously hot. It's freezing in here. I was like, yep, I sure am. He goes, and something's different with you. And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of change going on. Talk to us a little bit, because that's something you specialize in. Yeah, it is. That change for women who are experiencing. They're starting to feel like, whoa, what is that? That's what. That's a hot flash. That's what that is. Like, what are some of the things that you did to help navigate your way and how to get through it a little more easily?

Yeah, I mean, I think that there, again, are multiple areas to look at this. So from the physiological lens, again, the sleep, the poop, the blood sugar balance, remembering that there is a pyramid there and that the sex hormones are going to react to everything else happening, but also recognizing that there is a big shift happening, and it's going to come with symptoms. And I want people to be able to get the help with their symptoms. And there's all kinds of menopause, there's medical menopause. I also don't believe that everybody's menopause needs to be medicalized. And that is the story I'm concerned we're telling right now. I'm very glad we're talking about menopause more, but I'm worried about the story we're telling. Both that it needs to be medicalized and that everybody needs hormone replacement therapy or menopause replacement therapy, but also that these symptoms are happening to all of us, which I don't think culturally speaks well for the aging and working female. When we are having this conversation about all these symptoms and the brain fog, I don't know how industries are looking at that in terms of the value of the aging female. And I think, like, we have a lot to give. We have a lot that a younger woman doesn't have to give in the workplace, in culture, in society. And when we make it, this problem that's occurring, that's medical, and that's the only story we're telling. We're sending a message about our value. So I want to say that. I want to say I think we're over medicalizing and to us as individuals, think about childbirth. Your body has a contraction in order to deliver a baby. These symptoms that we're experiencing, can you live like, can you live with them? Can they be mitigated instead of reduced? Are we glorifying our fertile years and vilifying the later years in the way we're treating menopause as a real transition? That we are fortunate to live, to be able to accept experience. I want my older years to be full of meaning and purpose and impact and conversation and all the things that give me life purpose. And I'm concerned that we are not building that future for ourselves as women as we hold on to what was and try to get back there instead of making room for what is to become. So I touched on, you know, many different areas that physiological, the medicalized, the story we're telling culturally, but also the opportunity that we have as aging women to build the future we want to age into. We're not doing that.

Yeah. And I love that you say the story that we. That culturally we're being told, but that we tell ourselves.

Yes.

I can't. I mean, how many times have I had people say, oh, you just wait. Yeah, it's terrible. And your hair falls out and you gain weight and blah, blah, blah. And you know what? I remember people told me the same thing when I got pregnant. You know, they were like, oh, you just wait. You're going to get stretch marks and you're going to get fat, and you're not going to be able to look like all the things. And I'll never forget, there was one time, this is back when I was a fitness trainer and I was in the gym and I had this one lady that she looked at me and she goes, well, yeah, you look that way, but you just wait until after you have a kid. And I said, well, I've had two. And she goes, oh, you know. Oh, I think. And it's like, you know, just people say, oh, you're just. You're gonna get. Wait till. You're just gonna get, you know, fat in the middle. And this and that. And it's like, well, why do I have. That's this. Why do I have to tell myself that story?

Just like you could get out of the wheelchair. I mean, my mom had an accident in her 80s and the orthopedic surgeon said, you may never walk without a cane or a walker again. And she was like, that's not my reality. She goes to line dancing class twice a week. She does like, drumming, she walks, she plays the piano. She's not using a cane or a walker. And that was five, six years ago. And so I feel like you us being the people who can say, like, I don't know if it's going to be like that for me, I can go back to when I had a birth party. My husband was alive, and everybody sat around and told their birth stories. And I walked out of there and I said to my husband, Isamu, okay, now I'm really scared. And he turned to me, like stopped. And he turned to me and said, none of them had a natural childbirth. Not one person in that room had natural childbirth. And I'm not putting down any other kind of birth. But he was like, they're telling you those scary stories and you're choosing a different option. That's not going to be your story. I didn't have an easy childbirth. Not saying it was easy, but I wouldn't tell a drama story about it. I would tell the story of what happened and what went on. And I'm not labeling it bad or good, and I'm not making it negative.

So I think it starts with like, the story that you tell yourself.

And I have to say, say that I did a year where I was teaching a longevity book club and I read 22 books in that year. And the books that explored by researchers, one at Yale and one at Harvard, Becca Levy at Yale and Ellen Langer at Harvard, or maybe the opposite. But they both wrote books about how the stories we tell ourselves impact what happens in our body. And so we have to remember that the narrative we're telling ourselves and the reactions of the body are on. Are one in the same. They're not parallel separate paths. They are one in the same. Going to take us back to Japan. The women don't have a negative story about menopause. They have less menopause symptoms. Is that because of the story? Is that because of the food? Is that because of. Because aging isn't vilified? I'm going to say they are all connected, that everything is connected. The story, the body, the skills we take on and society that impacts our outcome. And when we try to get reductionistic and make it about one of them, the skill. Am I taking peptides? Am I doing this thing? We are missing that broader context, the ground, the earth that the roots live in.

Oh, that's so. That's so good. I just. You're making me want to go back to Tokyo also.

I know.

Let's go. Let's go. Yes. Let's go. Well, I. I mean, we are almost out of time and I just realized, you know, I had three pages of questions for you. You know, I didn't look at this once. I'm just. I feel like I could talk to you all day. So what's next for you?

Yes. So I recently exited the company I founded. I've written a lot about that in relation to transition and life transitions, because that wasn't easy. It's like, you know, that's like my child as well. I think this is something. As women, you know, we're very attached to what we build. Like it's our child. So. So I wrote a lot about that transition and I'm reworking a book proposal now for my first book. So I'm very excited that you're resonating with everything I'm talking about because this perspective will come together in the book.

Oh, that is amazing. That is amazing. So do you have a publisher? Is it on the. You do?

Yes.

Well, you're going to have to reach out to me and come on the show show again once your book is out. I'm excited for you. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Yeah, I. Boy, I know it's a big deal writing a book last year. Well, actually, it's two years because last year my. My newest book launched, Joy through the Journey. And. And it's. It's. Let me tell you, it's one thing writing a book and you think, oh, okay, I'm done. I turn the man. And then they're like, okay, now you have to do the launch.

And I'm like, yeah, I worked in publishing before I went into this industry, so have a little bit. It's years ago, but I have a little bit of. Or decades ago, but I have a little bit of that insight. And I've seen how the industry has shifted, so kudos to you. That's a lot of hard work.

It is a lot of hard work. That's why whenever an author comes on the show, they want to give me their book. I said, oh, no, no, no, no. I will buy your book because authors do. It's a lot to write a book and I want to support however I can. So I'm like, the least I can do is buy your book and write a review for you.

Exactly. The review is very important. Shout out to everybody listening. If you write a review of a book, it's very helpful to the author.

It really is. It really is. And I don't know why it's sometimes hard to get a review. Like, I asked my mom if she would review and she's like, well, I don't know how. And so I was like, well, this is what I was walking her through. This is what you know. But it does. It makes a. It makes a big difference.

Difference.

And so you'll have to come back on and. And share more about your book once.

Love to.

Yeah. And then maybe we'll do it in studio because I'm recording in my studio studio in Dallas. So I don't know. Are you planning on doing a book tour?

I. We're not there yet. I'm just reworking the proposal that was based on the new. The new work. But who knows what the industry will be like then in probably 2027.

Okay, well, I'm excited for you. Thank you. And then I'll just. With one final question.

Yeah.

One thing you would like, one thing that you would like, change about how we were approach healing as a culture. What would that be?

Slow it down.

Oh, I needed to hear that.

I like to remind people that we slow it down to speed it up. We're often racing for the fix and if we just slow it down, tune in, listen more carefully, separate the problem from the solution, we will probably get there faster.

Oh, my goodness. That was Mic drop moment. I hope out. If you heard anything from this whole interview today, let it be that. Slow it down. I needed to hear that.

Love it.

In fact, my husband told me that right before we got on this call. So thank. I'm not kidding. Thank you. Because I like to go fast. So what's the best place for people to find you?

You can find me at andreanakiyama in all the places. But my website, andreanakayama.com has that recent writing on transition and it's also in audio form. So if people prefer to listen, then it's all there in audio form as well. And I'll continue to write updates and new thoughts there. So. Andreanakayama.com okay.

Thank you. And you say it so beautifully, Andrea. And you know what? I know you're probably like, well, how do I spell that? There's probably people trying to write that down. It's going to be in the show notes. So go check out the show notes. Whether you're listening on Apple, Spotify, watching on YouTube, please take a screenshot of this and share it. If you found value in all that she shared, it means a lot. And tag me at Amberly Lago Motivation. And also at Andrea, at Andrea Nakayama on Instagram. And I just thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing.

You're so gracious and such a lovely host and great questions. I had so much fun.

Oh, well, you're amazing and you've helped me so much, and I know you've helped so many of the listeners, and so thank you so much. It's such a powerful reminder that healing isn't about chasing the next protocol, the next test, or the next trend. It's about learning to see the full picture of who we are. So thank you for being here and thank you for tuning in to the show. It's because of you. You've made this Show a top 1% podcast. I know you can be listening to anything, and I appreciate you listening to the show and for being here. And Andrea, thank you again for being here and I hope to talk to you again real soon. And I will see y' all next.